As part of a sweeping new licensing scheme, the IRS won’t let tax preparers continue to prepare your tax returns in 2013 unless they first get a special permission slip from the government by paying for and completing 15 hours of continuing education by the end of this year. They will also have to pass an IRS-mandated exam by the end of next year.

These new regulations threaten the livelihoods of as many as 350,000 tax return preparers, many of them independent mom-and-pop businesses, and could waste up to 5 million man hours. But the IRS says it will not extend the deadline.

Congress gave the IRS no authority to issue such regulations, and they may not legally do so, but as the Obama administration probably thought, who is going to stop them?

The administration’s failure to follow the rules and to simply go around laws they don’t particularly like is extremely troubling.